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Stew Young, you are a bully!
Langford plans to sue highway protesters
Group should be on the hook for estimated $100,000 in policing costs, says mayor
Bill Cleverley, Times Colonist
Published: Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Langford plans to sue a group of protesters to recover the costs of their interference in construction of the new Trans-Canada Highway interchange near Spencer Road, Mayor Stew Young says.
"It's trying to get money out of people who can't rub two nickels together, but we have to go after some of them," Young said Monday.
Langford is still negotiating with the province over who will bear the cost of a massive RCMP operation about two weeks ago in which an estimated 50 to 60 officers surrounded, and then cleared away, a tree-sit protest in the woods between Leigh Road and the highway in order to make way for the interchange.
That operation alone - in which three protesters were charged - could cost the municipality more than $100,000, Young said.
Prior to that, protesters, some covering their faces with bandanas, had turned away surveyors.
Since the operation, protesters have intermittently scaled trees and interfered with heavy equipment - sending workers home early and stopping work on the interchange that will provide secondary access to the Bear Mountain development and ease congestion on the highway.
Young said there are costs associated with the protesters' actions, and believes the municipality is within its legal rights to try to recover those costs from both the protesters themselves and the protest organizers.
"You may not be criminal, but if you put masks on and you block our surveyors and impede us ... then we can sue you for our costs. They may
not be criminally charged by the RCMP, but we're going to now go after damages," Young said.
"That's hilarious," protest organizer Zoe Blunt said yesterday when told of Langford's plans.
"I don't know what they're going to recover from people that they haven't already taken away - their backpacks, their shoes, their coats, their IDs, their wallets. I think he's beating his chest and he's trying to intimidate people."
Blunt said that unlike Young's "billionaire friends" her only asset is "a five-year-old computer." She welcomed meeting Langford's lawyers in court.
"We would like to see all the evidence of all the money that was spent and all the plans that were made and everything that had to do with the transfer of land; and all of their own assets and all of their interests they have in Bear Mountain and other resorts and other land and properties. We would like to get that all on the table," she said.
Ben Isitt, a protester and former Victoria mayoral candidate, said the move was "typical of Langford's bullying tactics to try to silence legitimate dissent."
"The campaign against the Bear Mountain interchange has been picking up steam and I think vested interests are obviously alarmed by the growing opposition so they're responding in different ways," he added.
Young said he understands that people might think the municipality is trying to intimidate protesters, but that is not the case.
"I don't want it to be a threat of a lawsuit. I'm just saying if you break the law in Langford, then I'll use whatever resources are then under the law to make sure that I recover some of the costs to the residents of Langford," he said.
bcleverley@tc.canwest.com
